


Through the Sea of Time

by UmbreonGurl



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Gen, Very angst, no beta we die like men, some time shenanigans, spoilers about timeskip, talks about people dying, time loops and stuff like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 08:56:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20468387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmbreonGurl/pseuds/UmbreonGurl
Summary: The five years Byleth spends in the void start to feel longer and longer with every time she rewinds. It doesn’t do wonders for her sanity.





	Through the Sea of Time

She has died so many times in so many lifetimes that she’s almost lost count. She’s watched herself take an axe to the chest, gotten stabbed in the back with a dagger, been impaled, and at one point, had even seen herself starve. If there is a way to die, odds are it’s happened to her (or a version of her) at least once.

Each lifetime she sees comes with its own struggles. In one, her father dies when she is young, and she is an orphan, clothed in rags and begging for coins on the street, rich nobles spitting on her as they walk by. In another, her mother is alive, and she, her father, and her mother live happily at the monastery together. That was one of the nice ones. All of the lifetimes she’s seen are so different, yet so similar, things that both could be and are at the same time.

There is a brief period of darkness in between each lifetime she sees. In it, she hears voices, sees faint visions of people too blurry to make out. The order and frequency in which they show up changes, but the people are always the same, their messages echoes of each other.

“Professor, if you’re out there, anywhere, somewhere, please come home. I could use your guidance,” says the woman in red.

“Teach, I know you’re too stubborn to die on me, so you better come back soon, you hear me? I’ll be waiting for ya’,” says the young man in yellow.

“I’ll kill all of them so that if you are out there somewhere, you can come back without worries. You have my word,” says the ghost in blue.

She knows these voices, these _ people, _ but the exact identities of who they are, who they were to _ her_, linger like unanswered questions on the tip of her tongue. She remembers but one thing about them. Red, yellow, blue. Colors that mean something, but as to what, she doesn’t know. She is tired, so very tired, and she can hardly think straight. Her head spins. 

At first, the void is calm and dark, but not overly so. It is similar to being wrapped tight in a blanket, warm, comforting, and safe. The longer she stays there and watches the sands of time flow, the less comfortable it becomes. It’s chaotic. She is pulled in so many different directions at once that she starts to lose track of what is up and what is down, what is wrong and what is right. 

“I love you, please come home,” says one of the ghosts. Was it yellow? Was it red? Or blue? She cannot tell. 

“I miss you,” says another.

“Why did you have to leave? I need you,” says the third.

“I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go, I’m trying. Please don’t leave me alone here” she pleads, but the people—no, the ghosts—behind the voices are already gone, carried away into the darkness like whispers on the wind.

She sees them die over and over, much like she sees it happen to herself. A woman falls to the ground with a spear through her chest, a man stumbles to the ground with several arrows in his neck, and another is slashed down by an axe. She wants to intervene, to stop them from dying, to do _anything_ _at all_, but she is powerless to do anything but watch. 

The visions of red, yellow, and blue are occasionally interrupted by flashes of green.

“They are waiting for you,” they say. “Are you just going to sleep here forever?” 

“What do you mean? I am not asleep,” she replies. 

She is tired, yes, but she is still awake, aware, to some small degree. She wishes she were asleep. Then she wouldn’t have to watch as they die right in front of her, wouldn’t have to listen to all the voices that call for her. She turns around to seek a reply from green, but finds that they are already already gone, as if they were never even there in the first place.

* * *

Time ticks on. She has no way of knowing how long she has been here in this void. Whether it has been days, months, years, she doesn’t know, but it feels like it’s been forever.

Green has talked to her a few more times, but every single time they do, they disappear just as quickly as the first time she spoke to them. The visions of red, yellow, and blue have bit by bit become more frequent, less blurry, and their pleas more and more desperate each time she sees them.

She can’t take much more of this. She screams in frustration, but there is nothing to reply back to her, not even an echo. Her head throbs painfully, as if there is someone on the inside hitting her brain with a hammer. 

She watches more lifetimes go by, and sees more and more colors join the visions of red, yellow and blue.

“You had better come back soon,” says orange. “I’m still waiting to take you out for tea like I promised I would.”

“Y’know, I thought _ I _was the lazy one, professor. You sure are taking your time in coming to see your students,” says pink.

“I have done the caring of your pegasus since you have gone, professor. She is liking of me, but she is liking of you more. She is not liking of my wyvern, however. You will be coming back soon, yes?” says magenta.

She reaches out to try to grasp one of their hands, but they are barely out of reach, just like all the others were.

“It’s time for you to wake up.”

She turns around, and green is there again, a frown on their face. 

“You have been here for far too long,” they scold. “It was necessary to bring you here, but if you stay any longer you will fade into the void completely. I can only unweave the fabric of reality so much for you, and doing so does not come without its consequences. _So._ _Wake. Up.”_

The next thing she knows, she is cold, aching all over, and soaked. But she is still tired, so very tired, so she closes her eyes for just a few more minutes.

* * *

The next time she opens her eyes, she finds herself looking up into the face of a man she does not recognize. 

“Holy cow, lady, are you okay?” he asks, offering his hand to help her up. “You must’ve floated down from upstream, I found you soaked on the riverbank. Some of the bandits around here must’ve gotcha.” He helps her to her feet. 

“Where am I?” 

“We’re in a village at the base of Garreg Mach Monastery. Well, what used to be the Monastery, anyways. It was abandoned a while ago. There’s not much left these days other than ruins.” He sighs as if remembering better days, then looks back at her, giving her a concerned look. “You sure you’re ok? You don’t look like you’re in great shape.” 

“Abandoned?” she echoes. 

She does not know why the mention of the monastery being abandoned makes her stomach roll, but something in the back of her mind _ screams _ at her that he’s not right, that the monastery _ can’t _be abandoned. 

_Thatcan’tbeItcan'tberightItcan’tITCAN’T_

Her thoughts are interrupted when the man answers her question. 

“Yeah. Aside from the thieves that go there lookin’ for treasure, anyways. Tomorrow was supposed to be the millennium festival, but…” he trails off, then grimaces. “Not much left to celebrate anymore, these days. Did you hit your head or somethin’? Where are ya from? We don’t get many visitors around here, with all the bandits in the area.”

He looks like he wants to continue, but the look she shoots him stops him in his tracks. 

“The monastery… tell me how to get there,” she says.

“Are you crazy!?” He gives her an incredulous look. “Do you know how dangerous it is up there? Why would you want to go there, anyways? There’s nothing left there anymore but bandits!”

She reaches down for the sword at her side, grasping her hand around its hilt like a lifeline. It feels warm, comforting, familiar even, in her hands. 

She glares at him. “I don’t care. Tell me how to get there.”

“Alright, but if you die, don’t blame me.” He points towards a nearby path. “See that path over there? Follow it until it branches, and then take a left.” 

* * *

When she reaches the monastery, everything feels horribly wrong. The once bustling marketplace near the front is now devoid of people, rubble and scraps of the brightly-colored cloths that used to line the merchant’s tents all that remain. 

The gate now lies unguarded. As she walks in, she hears a voice in her head.

“Greetings, professor! Nothing to report!” 

But the man who once said that is now gone, _ gonegonegone_, everyone is gone. 

She passes by the dorms and expects to see the faces that have haunted her for ages in the void, but just like the rest of Garreg Mach, they, too, lie empty aside from the occasional cat.

The cats still wander around the monastery as if nothing has changed. To them, it probably hasn’t. Not much, anyways. Mice are still plentiful, and the ruins of Garreg Mach provide a wonderful shelter from the wind and the rain. 

The once beautiful stained-glass windows of the chapel lie in pieces, and rubble from the roof litters the floor. It feels unusually quiet as she walks through, with only the sound of her footsteps on the floor. There is no choir left to sing hymns throughout the day.

The dining hall, once warm, inviting, and full of of freshly-baked pastries, lies empty. Some of the tables are overturned, and pieces of broken dishware and cutlery line the floor. Without the constantly burning fires of the oven, it is cold. Faint laughter echoes in her memory, of joyous students celebrating something she does not remember. But like the choir, they are gone.

The greenhouse isn’t in great shape either. Its once delicately maintained and organized rows of plants now are overgrown, a wild mess. Strings of ivy have grown up the walls, and weeds have wormed their way in the plants. Some of the panes of the walls lie shattered. 

Everything she sees just makes her feel out of place, like she doesn’t belong here. Not like this. Never like this.

She wanders the monastery until she finally ends up at the Goddess Tower. Something about this place gives her a feeling that is bittersweet, happy and sad at the same time. She hears echoes of yellow’s laughter, feels the faint brush of blue’s hands on her shoulders, sees red’s soft smile.

She sits on the balcony and watches the sun set over the fields below. The sky is laced in beautiful shades of red, pink, and orange, when she hears footsteps coming up the stairs.

She hears someone’s breath hitch, and turns around to see yellow walking towards her, a kind smile on his face. 

“You overslept, Teach.” He says, reaching out his hand for her to take. 

“Teach…?” she says, “is that my name?”

“You don’t remember your name?” He asks, looking at her with-what was that, pity? Concern, perhaps?

“Teach—no, Byleth—just what happened to you these past five years? You look like you’ve been through hell.”

She wishes she’d been to hell. Surely hell would have been nicer than… that. There are a few moments of silence before she responds. 

“It was dark. You died. I died. Red died. Blue died. I watched as we all died, and yet here I am.”

Her hands tremble. Shaking and shaking, and she just doesn’t know what to do. She will wake up, and this, too, will be yet another dream, yet another lifetime gone by, and yet another ghost will die while she is powerless to stop it.

“Hey.” He puts his hands on her shoulders and gently turns her to face him. “I’m still here. I may have had a couple of close calls over the years, but I’m still kicking. And I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.”

She looks at him with a smile that is far too bitter, haunted to her very core. 

“Neither did the others,” she says. “But they still died anyways.”

No matter what path she chooses, after all, someone she loves always ends up dead.


End file.
